Mac vs. PC people

Recommendation site Hunch is another one of those applications that knows a ton of random stuff about its users. In case you've never signed up, you start by answering a bunch of seemingly unrelated questions, and based on your answers, Hunch offers recommendations by correlating your answers with preferences for you and others. This graphic, in collaboration with Column Five Media, shows differences between Mac and PC people within the Hunch community.

Among the findings: Mac people are 95 percent more likely to prefer indie films; PC people are 26 percent more likely to prefer fitting in with others; and as for cable TV networks, Mac people prefer Bravo, HBO, and Showtime, whereas PC people prefer Syfy, History, and USA.

26 Comments

Nice comparison. It would be great to see something similar, contrasting users of different web browsers. My guess is that the Chrome and Firefox users, although they are mainly on PC, would have profiles more like the Mac user.

Does “7% more likely” mean that they have a value that is 7 percentage points higher (then the wording would be misleading) or is it really “7% of the X percent of the reference group” (then it wasn’t very informative without the base reference because e.g. 7% of 3% is pretty much zero)? Confusing.

Interesting graphic. I think however a more interesting comparison would be taking PC users and Mac users above a certain gross annual income. Macs, being almost twice as expensive as PC’s usually calls for a more richer crowd than the PC’s. And the PC has a greater reach than the Mac.

As I type this from my local indie coffee shop eating my vegetarian Bahn Mi sandwhich, I’m not sure whether to be proud or ashamed that the “Mac Person” profile fits me almost exactly.
Also, I agree with Sebastian H. – reporting stats as “X% more likely” can be misleading and should be frowned upon in most journalistic instances…

Heh. Mac person fits me almost exactly except for the age – but then, I’ve owned Macs since the Mac Classic.
I agree with Romy, income likely plays a role. I don’t have any kind of official statistics but WAY over 50% of surgeons/physicians in any group I’ve worked with (in North America and the UK) use Macs (i.e., at least 10x estimated Apple market share).

its probably important to remind the audience (though i wouldnt suspect it of readers of this particular blog!) that hunch users are not necessarily a super accurate proxy of the general computer-using population.

nobody’s saying it, so I will. Why do I feel that many comparators hoist Mac users as more tech-savvy and as cool as cucumber, while PC users are, ahem, quite boring… Or maybe it’s just me… overthink, overthink.

there is a “i am better than u” thing going on with mac folks and they need to just get over it. i was a career mac guy for 25 years and then i just decided to go (and take my business) where the money was…and that is definitely in PC clients. don’t take my word for it, look at the stats. cut the peer pressure mentality and GO WHERE THE MONEY IS!! over 90% of the world is using PCs!! i still cross platform and love the mac but i also love to eat, pay rent and the bills.

No, there’s a whole “They think they’re better than we are” whine that many PCers constantly drone. Mosr Mac users’ attitude is Live and Let Live. As for your “Go where the money is,” I completely agree. Apple is worth more, more profitable, and has more cash than Microsoft. And every other tech company on the planet 9including agnostic Google). Go ahead, spin that.

not whining, joebob, just giving you stats. as far as the “go where the money is” comment…i meant money FOR YOU to make, joebob, not them. and by the way…i have NEVER met a PC person that had a “kill or be killed” attitude (versus your “live and let live”) against anyone, let alone a MAC person. I stand on both sides of the fence (as I stated) and definitely “live and let live”

Get a copy of FileMaker Pro, and you’ll walk away from the Dells. I was consulting for the NHS in Britain and tried to use (their) Access to run a database of 100K records. It took 15 minutes to load and more than an hour to run 5-criteria queries. I brought in my Mac and imported the data into Filemaker. Less than a minute to load and open, less than 8 seconds for the largest (12+ criteria) queries.

The same design that “optimized” Macs and OS X for graphics translates perfectly to crunching data (it’s all about the numbers). give it a shot, you’ll never touch a PC for database management again.

this statistics are totally useless, you could just skip all that information and say Mac users are more likely to be more wealthy people who think they are ‘more stylish’. since there are 22 million Mac users versus 900 000 000 – 1 billion PC users you can’t really compare that who ‘groups’ on any level. it’s like comparing every Mercedes user to rest of the car owners in entire world and since I have mentioned entire world there is a ‘small’ issue with this study. Is it just me or did anyone noticed how this study isn’t on a global scale and you didn’t mentioned anything about respondents. by looking some stats they all share one thing.. they are all come from US and I know that because I’m European and 99% of people here don’t even know who is Rachel Maddow or Jim Lehrer not to even mention they don’t watch the USA channel.

Very interesting statistics. I definitely fit the mold of the Mac user on many points, for example I love bistro fries, Parks & Recreation, and I much prefer hummus to a patty melt, lol. Oh! and I’m vegan, so I guess I’m in that 80 percentile ;)